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Stewart BerryMapping is in my blood. I am a third generation professional “mapper” and I am extremely fortunate that from high school onward I have been able to specialize in geography, geospatial systems, and geo-data. https://www.linkedin.com/in/MappingSoftware.

Creating real territories, with defined boundaries, is fundamental and crucial for many industries and for organizations of all sizes. Finding an application that allows you to create the territories that you want and in a straightforward way is harder than you would think. Especially if you want to do this on a budget as a startup, or if your alignment requires the territories to have equal characteristics such as sales or population.

The government knows where we live. And, if you live in Australia or Denmark, so does everyone else. While no personal information is included, these two countries have released databases of the location of every single address.

Australia only recently joined the club of countries that have open address point data. Denmark is the other country (let me know in the comments section if you know of any others!) and the Danes have reported a huge return on their investment. When you know where every single address is in a country, the possibilities for geospatial analysis are limitless.

Any customer testimonial that begins with a description of using quill pens to create maps is one that I want to share! Many thanks to Susan Remer for writing the testimonial below that covers her career in mapping and GIS.

As a British geographer I was struck by Susan’s inability to find a teaching position. Geography is widely taught and funded in the UK, but the situation is unfortunately vastly different in the United States. Despite longstanding efforts by the National Geographic Society and the American Geographical Society to expand geography education at the secondary- and university-levels respectively, geography remains a little-studied or even -understood discipline. At present it remains the only major academic field not to receive national education funding (URL).

Every ten years, in a process that profoundly impacts American politics, the legislative districts are redrawn to determine who votes where. But because of a practice called gerrymandering “we, the people” are not necessarily deciding who represents us.

The Evidence

The United States Constitution requires that a population count, the decennial Census, serve as the basis for redistricting. Congressional districts are then reapportioned among the states and each state is divided into districts of equal population. State legislatures and many local governments work the same way. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the redrawing of state and congressional lines must also maximize any clear opportunity for minorities to elect candidates of their choosing.

Maps are everywhere. Want to know the location of the nearest cat groomer? Done. Want to avoid that overturned beer truck? Easy –when you account for traffic. And how much do these miraculous services cost? Zero. That’s right, zero. Location is so critical to companies such as Google that mapping tools are provided for free. Maps enable geo-targeted advertising and the identification of place specific services, generating value for customers and revenue for the big mapping players.

However, there are actually very few high-quality and comprehensive providers of geographic data. Google develops its own maps, and I have sometimes guiltily enjoyed seeing the terror in the eyes of vehicle fleet managers when I mention to them that Google maps can be publicly edited. Apple was lambasted for their initial efforts at mapping, but they have come a long way since those early and embarrassing days (anyone remember the dangerously incorrect address for Washington, DC’s Dulles Airport?) The other major players are TomTom and HERE. On the heels of the recent purchase of NOKIA’s HERE division by a consortium of German car makers, TomTom, a Dutch company, is releasing products to support automated driving. HERE has established itself as the dominant geographic data provider, producing the geo-data used by Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and our Maptitude mapping software product suite.Read the rest of Google Underwater Mail Delivery in New York’s Financial District?